The treatment of cancer diseases is of great importance in medicine. There is a worldwide need for effective cancer therapies in order to achieve a treatment which is appropriate to a patient and is target-orientated. This can be seen in the large number of scientific studies which have recently appeared in the fields of applied oncology and fundamental research relating to cancer therapy. The effects of tumor inhibitors are due to a very wide variety of mechanisms, only some of which are known. It is not unusual for known tumor drugs to be found to have new mechanisms of action. This is also to be expected in the case of the compounds according to the invention. Many tumor drugs act by way of mechanisms such as blockading the mechanism of cell division in the cell, preventing the tumor from being supplied with nutrients and oxygen (antiangiogenesis), preventing metastasis, preventing the reception and the onward transmission of growth signals to the tumor cell or forcing the tumor cell into programmed cell death (apoptosis).
Because they have different mechanisms of action, including interacting with different intracellular targets, the clinically relevant cytostatic agents are frequently administered in combination in order to achieve a synergistic therapeutic effect.
WO 98/03505, WO 01/77107, WO 03/031442 and WO 03/059907 relate to heterocyclic compounds as tyrosine kinase inhibitors which are useful as anticancer agents.